I’m a bit of a pessimist by nature. But I’m willing to be pleasantly surprised when things work out okay.
Recently, the Canadian Medical Association released its latest OurCare survey, a broad poll that asked Canadians about their access to health care, especially a primary care physician or nurse practitioner. The last survey was in 2022.
To read most of the headlines, and even the survey itself, you would have thought things were getting much, much worse.
In fact, on several of the most important metrics, things have improved greatly, especially here in B.C.
In 2022, 6.5 million Canadians did not have a primary care provider.
This year, that number is down to 5.9 million.
But wait, it gets better! Between 2022 and 2025, the Canadian population grew by 2.5 million people – so actually, 3.1 million more people have family doctors in Canada than four years ago!
In British Columbia, 82.6 per cent of folks here reported having a family doctor, up a whopping 11.6 per cent from 71 per cent in the 2022 survey. B.C. had the biggest improvement in Canada.
How?
Well, the government did a thing, and it worked. In 2023, the province revamped how primary care doctors were paid, which lured more of them into the job (and probably stopped some others from leaving to practise other forms of medicine).
Are things perfect? No. The OurCare survey obviously found some areas that need improvement, but what shocked me was that absolutely no one seems to have taken a victory lap on this.
For decades, we’ve been told – and our lived experience has often borne this out – that the Canadian health-care system is in crisis. Not enough family doctors, ER closures, patients without proper hospital rooms.
But, we finally get some good news about health care and… nothing.
I am not trying to downplay the very real problems that still exist in our health-care system. What I am saying is, this vast improvement should inspire us.
Hey, we fixed a thing! Our politicians actually did a thing that made our lives better! Based on that, I am willing to bet other things can be fixed, too!
I worry that one of the biggest barriers we now face to improving health care is reflexive negativity.
I see this all the time as a reporter. If we write a story about a murder, it gets lots of attention. If we write a story that says crime is going down, it gets almost no attention – except from people who will claim that the stats are lies.
It is easy – and intellectually lazy – to just say that all politicians are crooks and liars, all government programs are wasteful and stupid, and that nothing will ever get fixed.
The thing about being a reality-based pessimist is I expect things to go wrong.
But when they go right, I have to accept that as reality.
People can turn goodwill and smart ideas and hard work into good outcomes.
Those outcomes should be celebrated – and used as a launching pad for the next big job.